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Some of you may disagree with me on this, but as I was going through the Archive/How To, I realized that we seem to lack basic instructions for fairly fundamental tasks while being overloaded with 'vanity' tutorials so to speak. I'm not saying these are bad, I intend on writing one or two myself when I get chance (we need a proper one for RCL which I will write over the next few days), but it seems strange that we don't have a single tutorial for replacing a headlight bulb on a non-GTI Lupo. This isn't the easiest task in the world for a novice, yet there's not a single description on how to do it. Another one that's missing is how to replace a Brake Light Switch. Why? It's a really simple task, but not if you don't know where to look! I'm not suggesting that the current information isn't useful. I'm just saying perhaps we need to look at compiling more tutorials, on more basic subjects as well as more complicated. I'm expecting a load of abuse here or 30 "why don't you write them then" comments, but like I said, just an observation.

Time of year when I start looking for replacement wheels. Running out of BMW options I think (though z4m or a v8 might be fun) tempted by something older and more interesting but it needs to be reliable and used as a daily so approved used warrenty is usually what I go for. Last few cars for those who don't keep up: 3lr Z4 E85 m sport with the sound generator modification and a few other custom bits and enjoyed the sound and handling though the ride was pretty shocking and it needed plenty of things replaced under warranty (wheels, steering rack, rear springs etc.) Mover to an E46 M3 which I loved, but got married and the running costs were getting too high to justify. Best engine and fantastic m-diff, loved the sound, space and handling and always felt special. Down side being the boot floor cracks, bushes and springs lasting 30k miles and service costs in four figures. Changed for a 130i and it has been the best of both, being similar to my old z4 in running costs, not had any reliability issues or warranty work and it is almost as quick as the M3 up to legal road speeds. Doesn't feel as special but easy to drive and doesn't scare the wife like the M3 did. Had E39 M5, E46 325ci and E90 330i in the past too so had enough of 3 series, but not finding much that I like in the current BMW line up. Prefer N/A over turbo, straight 6 or V8 rather than a 4 pot and has to be manual not flappy paddles or auto. Budget is about £18k for trade in but can be a bit flexible. Only do 8k miles a year mixture of business and pleasure in my car and I have a 120d for longer motorway runs. Options are: 1. Keep the 130i but get the bmw performance exhaust and induction kit plus a remap and differential to give 280 bhp and the excitement and sound I miss from the M3. 2. Look for a manual e89 3lr N/A with a manual gearbox. (not that many around and the e89 gets a bit of a slating in most of the reviews I have read though none seem to have tested that specific version). Looks like the dealer 30 miles away has one in approved used so I might go for a test drive. Electric handbrake might rule it out, be nice to be back in a roadster though. 3. Wait for a manual 645/650i or 545/550i to turn up on the AUK site or just go for a z4m. 4. Other?

I've seen this idea on a few forums now. How about we start a photo of the day thread? There seem to be a fair few of us on here with at least some interest in photography so just an opportunity to post some good photos up for people to appreciate or comment on RULES: 1. one pic per member per day 2. must be the work of the poster 3. try to keep the images to a reasonable size to assist viewing. A link to the full res version may be posted if required. 4. please respect others images and ask permission before using elsewhere or downloading to your computer (Added by Silver! 14 Oct 08 as the original rules seem to have disappeared)

Online Car Insurance Quote with Prestige Renewed! Modified & Standard Cars!
We trialled this a few months ago. At the time, feedback from Tom ‘Gudzy’ of 350Z-uk was - ‘around 10% cheaper than my current policy....(and you were slightly more expensive than them when I took out my policy a few months ago).’
That’s great to hear AND we’ve also reduced the prices even more since the trialling (my quote went down by £200!) so we have now launched our online quote designed uniquely for the registered users of car clubs.
POSTSCRIPT! After officially launching this week, the first person to do an online quote and report back said ‘that actually worked out quite cheaply for me........will be bearing that in mind come renewal in a month’!
So please bookmark the following url and click on this unique link for the registered users of this car forum to get a quote at renewal -
GET AN ONLINE QUOTE – http://prestigekeepmoving.taaglquotes.com/car/getquote?source=CLUBLU
(If you have more than 5 modifications or over 10% bhp increase, please ring us on 0800 3308057 or 0333 4001580)

my very clever boyf made this today instead of scrappin his old engine he recently had his dog put down that the family had for 13 years so made this for her as a memorial to go in there garden what do ya think lol

decided to make this thread so everyone can stop asking how to do the conversions. also find out why everyone says polo gti looms are easier. done this conversion three times now so iv got the idea how you do it you will need polo gti engine polo gti looms inside and out polo gti or lupo gti ecu and if you have cable throttle get the gti, sport, pedal box electrical CENTRAL LOCKING easiest way to do central locking is to use your old loom( if it has central locking) strip the loom down starting from the drivers side door connecters seperator the central locking wires from the other wires. do the left side door connector firstly to the fusebox and also to the drivers side wires where they attach. secondly down to the boot of the car where they lead to the boot lock and interior lighting. do the same to the polo gti looms while also taking out the air pump pipes. the boot wires need to be chopped or either the pins need taking out the connector blocks once done put the old looms to the gti ( best to go fusebox first) the polo gti looms may have extra peices going off near to the rear speakers these where the interior light sensor connects and are no longer needed once all fitted, soldered,crimped etc test the central locking using your original central locking control unit. if remote test your fob should still work without reproggramming wrap up the loom securly as you wont need to take that bit apart again. this loom also does your electric windows if you have them. LIGHTING front light pins will need swopping and so do the rears the 3rd brake light pin needs to be swapped over else you will find the 3rd brake light will not work ( obvs) but also the fuse will keep popping the reverse light pin will need to be chopped and made into a double wire to use for both lights as the polo only uses one reverse light. EARTHING/REAR RE-WIRING the looms shape is diffrent to the lupo so your will need to unwrapp the whole of the rear loom to relocate the earths for the rear lighting ,fuel pump etc the roof lining needs to be removed to swop the aerial cable to the other side or can be extended with more aerial cable. ENGINE/GEARBOX extra pieces will be need to do small but important bits of the conversion the speedo sensor will need changing or chopping. fitting the engine is just the same as putting the normal one in unless it is a 1.0 ltr then you need new engine mounts and a 1.4s,sport,gti gearbox the gearbox bolts will need to be change for either gti bolts or you can chopp them to fitt advice you to do the conversion on a abs type lupo as the abs one is more just plugg in and off you go. the non abs will need you to rip the bulb out of the clocks and hide the wiring your chopp it. throttle bodie has more air pipe hole in that will need either unscrewing and blocking or tubed to one another. if you do not have air con take the pump off and the gti steering pump with it and replace with the 1.4 pump the belt you need is 11.4 s belt. as for the cooling fan your need the relay off the gti that goes in the engine bay they are also on lupo gti's connect this all up and get a garage to test it with daignostic tool everything else is the same as the 1.4 so if you know how to take it now you know how to put it back in! HEATING the gti heaters use electric motors and a electronic computer to adjust the heating and location of the blowing air you can fit these in or you can simple chop the live which is the black and red large wire and solder it, female connect it to the orginal heater connector with the earth done the same aswell. everything else is a plug and play game done this so people that want to do the conversion have an idea what there getting into!

I've been meaning to chuck this together for a while. Currently, the information regarding fitting it is a bit all over the place and broken, so using photos that I took and information from the forum I've put together this fairly comprehensive walkthrough of how to fit Remote Central Locking. Before starting, you already need central locking as standard. So pov specs are out of luck. Fitting remote central locking is very easy, even for a novice, but you need to be willing to remove trim and mess with wiring. It's not plug and play, but it's not far off. For an expert it would take less than an hour. For a VW expert, it would probably take 20 minutes! For a total novice it will likely take about 2-4 hours, so leave yourself a bit of time to do it. These steps are fairly inter-changeable so just use them as a guide rather than a strict tutorial. e.g. if you want to save the trouble, you can happily snip the cables from the RCL wiring loom BEFORE fitting it. I just wrote the guide from memory in order of the way I did it. Kits You need a kit to begin with. If you want a Flip Key, I suggest going for the RightClick kit as it comes with them as standard, however there is a fairly widespread opinion that the pin wears out quickly - http://www.rclick.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=50&products_id=671 They are also pretty expensive considering you're paying a premium for a flashy key. If you want value, I suggest one of these kits from eBay (the one I went for) - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Universal-Car-Remote-Control-Central-Door-Lock-Locking-Keyless-Entry-System-UK-/290804035020?pt=UK_Car_Accessories_Safety_Security&hash=item43b5456dcc RightClick sell the exact same kit for £26.95. All you get extra is an activity LED + a pretty instruction manual. You may as well save your money. If you want classy you could go for a Hawk Car Alarm's kit which has carbon fibre remotes and most of which support optional extras such as proximity alarms etc and such. I won't be covering that kit, so I won't place the link however if you do want to go for this kit, you might want to use this as a loose guide for fitting it. Preparation Depending on the kit you chose, the box should contain one receiver box, two remotes, one wiring loom, a sticky back pad, (Optional) an LED indicator (Optional) and a instruction manual. Receiver Box and Wiring Loom looks something like this: I suggest purchasing some earth ring terminals if possible (an assorted bag would be ideal as I have forgotten the size of the screw thread you will be using to earth), if not, a decent fork connector is enough which is what I used. If you do decide to use earth terminals, you may want a few of them as you can do each wire individually rather than grouping. If you use a fork, you probably will only want one as they are a nightmare to get hooked so like me will group. A roll of electrical tape will be useful for keeping wires bundled together, a crimp tool if you need to extend the wire... and of course you may need some extra wire to go along with that. I found that two wires requiring earth were far too short, so I extended them using spade connectors + heat shrink for neatness. You can do this however you want. Guide 1. The first thing you will want to do is remove the relevant trim. The easiest piece to get you going is the trim above the pedals, which is held in by two Torx screws. This might be a good opportunity to scout yourself out a good position for the receiver box, just because you'll have lots of wires in the footwell later on. While the general recommendation is as high as possible, I've not had any reception issues so far with it down above the pedals. When you find a nice spot, make sure your pedals can be pressed without the box interfering. Mine is located slightly behind the white grid on a flat surface, out of the way of the pedals. I hope to add a photo of this a.s.a.p. Don't secure it just yet, remember the spot though. 2. Now you need to remove the bonnet release handle and trim. There really is no photo that can explain the removal of the bonnet release handle, it's a bugger, but the way I found best was to pull the handle (opening the bonnet in the process) and then using a flat head screwdriver as a lever inside the gap holding in the piece towards the rear of the handle. If you look at the photo below, the piece to the right is held in to the bonnet release. You can flick this off, the bonnet release will come off. Unscrew the screw behind and remove the trim. It is a bit awkward, but it will come with a bit of effort. 3. You should now see the wiring harnesses, one blue, one brown and one black. The brown wiring harness is for the central locking mechanism on the door. The blue harness is the Control Module on the door. I suggest removing both of them from the bases. This is quite hard. I'm yet to find the correct way of doing this, however lifting the side lock of the plug while using a flat head screwdriver seemed to work fairly effectively. You might need to wriggle them a bit. Take a pair of scissors and cut away a few inches of the cloth surrounding the wires coming off the looms. You don't need to cut loads off, just enough that you can patch in using your respective method. I cut roughly 1-2 inches (see below). Separate the wires so you can identify the ones you need to splice. Ignore the red electrical tape on the photo below, I added this months ago after I tried (and failed) to install this kit using scotchlocks... oh, and don't use scotchlocks I removed the red electrical tape before splicing 4. Grab your wiring loom, make sure none of the wires are tangled. Now your kit may differ, but assuming you went for an RClick, or a Universal Kit from eBay like the one I did, the colour codes for the wires should be identical so you can follow those below. If not, make sure you check your instruction manual or wiring diagram. RCL Wiring Loom Red Wire (+12v) to Thick Blue/Yellow Wire Brown PlugRCL Wiring Loom White Wire (Lock) to Grey/Yellow Wire Brown PlugRCL Wiring Loom White/Black Wire (Unlock) to Blue/Violet Brown Plug(Optional) RCL Wiring Loom Green (Window Close) to Grey/Yellow Blue PlugSplice these connections using your respective method. Soldering, military splice or bullet/spade connections are ideal. If you use spade connections use heatshrink!!!! Try and ensure the inline spliced wires are facing upwards so not to introduce a kink, which can reduce the lifetime of the connection. 5. Once that is complete leave the loom in the footwell. Secure the receiver box wherever you decided earlier (I bet you didn't). I suggest doing this now as you may need to extend two wires on the loom in the next step. If you would prefer to place the box later, you can go straight to step 6/7. Mine is placed just behind the white grid on a small flat section. Make sure it does not interfere with the pedals. Secure it using the sticky tape, or alternatively blu-tac. I used blu-tac as it's reusable and I may purchase a programmable key (NOT FLIP) in the future and remote learning requires access to the box. The photo below demonstrates where approximately where mine is located, although you can't see it as the photo was taken before I fitted it properly. I'll take one of the box properly fitted a.s.a.p. [iNSERT IMAGE HERE WHEN YOU FIND IT!] 6. Now you will need to connect the earths. The black wire needs to be earthed along with the yellow and yellow/black wire. The problem is that while the black earth wire from the wiring loom is long enough, the yellow and yellow/black wires are not... at least not in my case. You will need to extend these. To achieve this, I took a male spade connector, doubled the two wires into a single junction, which connected to a female spade connector crimped onto one thick piece of wire of decent length. To finish the job, I wrapped the junction in some heat shrink which will prevent it from coming loose in the future. Take the extended wire(s) along with the black earth wire from the loom and ground them using the screw on the silver bracket below shown in the photo below. For this, you can either use an earth ring terminal or a fork connector. I used a heavy duty fork connector as my earth ring terminals were too small for the thread, I used a single fork which is naughty I know, but works fine. I also recommend bundling the earthed wires using some electrical tape. It just makes them a bit easier to manage. Plug in the wiring loom to the receiver box 6. At this point, it would be a good idea to re-plug the brown and blue connectors back in and check whether it actually works. You don't want to be left red faced when it doesn't. Assuming it works and you don't intend to wire in the indicators, now you just need to route the wiring. Unplug the wiring loom from the receiver box. It is far easier to route this way. I suggest snipping all the wires that aren't being used as they can get a bit out of control as you can see in the photo above (right at the start of the guide). I snipped all of the coiled wires except the green one as that is the window rollup. If you snip them roughly 3 inches from the plug, you can easily re-attach them later using a bullet or spade connector, something I will do if I wire in the indicators. If you want to wire the indicators now, do not snip the brown wires on the loom. Go to the bottom under the section Indicators for explanation of how. 7. To route the wiring loom, I suggest bundling the remaining wires together using electrical tape and then taping the bunch down next to the panel. To be fair, you will be on your own a bit here because I imagine each person will locate the box slightly differently. Just do it logically. Don't be silly, make sure it is nowhere near the pedals, and don't drape it across the piece of trim you removed earlier. If you do, you (or your mechanic) will be irritated next time you remove it... e.g. replacing a brake light switch if it fails. Be generous with the electrical tape, so the wires are nicely bundled and secured. It might look messy but how often are you going to access that wiring behind the bonnet handle? I taped the wire bundle to the nearside panel so they don't move then ensured the routing was consistent up to where the box was located. This wasn't hard but I probably spent about 10-20 minutes to make sure it was perfect. Plug the loom back into the box and test it one last time. Do a quick spot check to make sure your earth is strong, your wiring is safe and there is no chance of it catching the pedals. Ensure the brown and blue plugs are safely seated. They are designed to vibrate, but will shuffle out if they are not securely locked into the socket. I will get a photo here a.s.a.p. showing how it looks before I put the trim back on. For now, use your imagination 8. Re-attach the the relevant trim. The trim behind the bonnet release handle is kind of awkward, but you will just need to feed the clips using a bit of twisting and what not. You'll get it, just be patient. The bonnet release handle is really easy, as you simply place it in the correct position then feed the locking clip back into the open hole. Take the panel above the pedals and push it back where it came from. It should clip in, although the clips aren't really suitable for anything other than temporary grips while you re-screw it. 9. (Optional) Pop down your local pub and have a beer. Don't drive if you're having more than one Indicators There are two methods of wiring in the indicators so they flash. On the RCL wiring loom, the indicator flashers are the brown wires. As I've done neither thus far, I cannot add any photos here. The most common method is to simply remove the steering column and splice into the White/Black and Green/Black wires which are both indicators respectively. If I do decide to do this, I will upload photos later. Alternatively, Pete91's method is to wire them into the hazard warning switch. Video Video of my value kit installed. Youtube Video -> Original Video Any questions, just PM me. Good Luck!

Hi all Been reading up on the Lupo's/Arosa's for a while now lurking about on the forum. Going to see an Arosa on Sunday and feeling pretty confident about what to look out for when I do. Apart from the engine! It has a 1.4 8v. What's the engine code for this engine? I assumed it was the 1.4 16v which the Lupo's had to but I was wrong! What's the feeling with these are they strong or will i have to have a good look at it?

CLASSIFIEDS NOT WORKING ABSOLUTE PRIME EXAMPLE OF A LUPO GTI I BELIEVE THIS TO BE ONE OF THE CLEANEST ONES AROUND COMPLETELY ORIGINAL WITH BATHURST ALLOYS LOW MILEAGE ABSOLUTE BARGAIN CONSIDERING YOU WOULD PAY £2800+ FOR ONE WITH HIGHER MILEAGE AND SHODDY BODYWORK BUT THIS IS MINT! LOCATED IN LEEDS SEEING IF THERE IS ANY INTEREST HERE THEN IT WILL BE GOING ON EBAY FOR BUY IT NOW £2800, RATHER NOT THOUGH AS THE FEES ARE HIGH Mileage 84k Mot April 2013 Tax June 2013 Alloys / tyres in very good condition Belt changed at 74k Brake discs/ pads changed at 81k AM I ASKING TOO MUCH AT £2500? PLEASE COMMENT!

Got home today and my skirts had arrived from Germany, yippee! Couldn't wait do dry fitted them, this is when I realised I had a problem, they fit perfect in size and shape, but thiers no contact point on the underneath sill to fix them on, they wrap around the front and rear arches and also wrap over the upper door sill the full length, I was woundering I'd I should tiger seal the door sill contact and use two self tappers each end into arch trim, thankyou for reading. Ill put a pic up tomorrow of dry fit, they only took two weeks to come from Germany.